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Mumbai was due to host the second Test from December 19-23, but the BCCI have moved the match to Chennai.

'In a conversation with our board secretary, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) discussed the issue they had desired to return for the Test series,' Modi told the Times of India.

'The memories of the Taj for an English cricketer can be sentimental. They have always stayed at the Taj on their visits here. But let's keep sentiments aside here.

'The ECB chairman spoke to me and BCCI secretary Srinivasan on Thursday. Their only request was to move the Test match out of Mumbai.

'We said we would examine that and as chairman of tournament and fixtures committee, I was given the task of looking at another venue.

'They asked us if it could be somewhere down in the south. Looking into the interest of the ECB, keeping in mind what is logistically possible, we moved the game to Chennai.'

Modi: 'England want to play'

Modi, who is also the chairman of the Twenty20 Champions League, reiterated the tournament was not postponed despite the terrorist strikes.

'We postponed the Champions League because we couldn't schedule matches in Mumbai anymore and within such short notice it was not possible to shift it to another venue,' he said. 'Other countries were okay with the tournament going on and were in fact putting pressure on us to continue.

'But there are a lot of things like logistics, ticketing etc that couldn't have been arranged at such short notice.

'If we had the time, we could have moved it to another venue. We did consider Hyderabad and a couple of other venues.

'Both Cricket Australia and Cricket South Africa said why not have matches in Chennai but curators said the pitches might not last until the final game because we would have had to play more than one match in a day on the same wicket.

'Nobody expected something like this to happen, but you can't let these terror attacks dissuade you from pursuing your goal. It is at times like these when you need to stand up and show that you are determined.

'England hosted Australia at home in less than two weeks after the 2005 blasts in London.'